A project developed by Filip Victor and in collaboration with some other contributors from the community, Half-Life 2: Update aims to give the original game a modern polish while retaining Half-Life 2's style and gameplay.

Half-Life 2: Update features many graphical improvements and overhauls. Included is better lighting (HDR, shadows, interior lighting, light rays), enhanced fog, prettier water, and detailed scenes with more props and further draw distances.

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In addition to the graphical improvements, Half-Life 2: Update aims to fix other game-related bugs and glitches. Bad event triggers and strange character animations that break immersion are a main focus.

New Advanced Features

Detailed Shadows
Light Rays
Particle Effects
High Dynamic Range​

Improved Features

Water Detail
World Reflections
Collision System
Scripted Sequences​

Finally, Community Commentary has been added. Written by Zachary Howlett and other members of the community, there are over 100 commentary nodes that contain information about Half-Life 2's design and development. Those resources were pulled from various Valve interviews, videos, and other literature like Raising the Bar and their development papers. The commentary is narrated by Ross Scott from Freeman's Mind and other community members.

In a statement to Ars Technica, Valve's Doug Lombardi said that developers, "big and small," will be able to apply for a Developer Edition of the HTC Vive. The dev kit "will be free, at least initially," said Doug.

Applications will open as early as next week through a new webpage on Steam, and the dev kits themselves won't be released until later this Spring.

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Demand will clearly be high for such a deal, but Doug Lombardi gave no details on how Valve will prioritize applicants. There's also no information on how many kits will be given out during this initial phase of shipments.

The dev kit will come with "a headset, two controllers and two base stations," according to the SteamVR webpage.

Valve's strategy is quite different from Oculus's. Oculus has offered their various dev kits to all that are willing to pay the ~$300 for the Rift Head-Mounted Display. HTC Connected Products Marketing Executive Director Jeff Gattis also said that the consumer edition of the HTV Vive would be "a slightly higher price point" than comparable hardware like the Rift or Morpheus. It's going to be interesting to see how many of these HTC Vive dev kits will be distributed for free, and where they are distributed.

It's been pretty quiet on our YouTube channel as of late (again), but we're finally ready to get things rolling once more. At long last, we've managed to finish up this absolute monster of a Round-Up episode, which spends just under 20 WHOLE MINUTES recapping the past month's worth of news regarding GDC 2015, EGX Rezzed, Source 2, SteamVR, and much, much more! It's an episode so disgustingly long and detailed the YouTube Description had to be cut down by OVER HALF just to let the video upload (I wish that last sentence was a joke).

With The International 2015 fast approaching, Valve have officially announced when the tickets for the events will go on sale. At two separate times next Friday, March 27th 2015, Valve will begin selling batches of tickets to the general public via the Ticketmaster website.

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Unlike previous years, VIP tickets will not be sold, instead likely being given out to select individuals chosen by Valve themselves. As such, all event tickets will be sold for $99 and grant access to all six days of the main International event from August 3rd through the 8th.

Since so many different countries across the world are interested in Dota 2, Valve have released a list of time zones explaining exactly when the two separate batches will begin being sold. You can check out the full list below.

Ticket Sales Begin:

Seattle: March 27th at 10:00 and 22:00

Rio de Janeiro: March 27th at 14:00 and March 28th at 02:00

London: March 27th at 17:00 and March 28th at 05:00

Moscow: March 27th at 20:00 and March 28th at 08:00

Beijing: March 28th at 01:00 and 13:00

Seoul: March 28th at 02:00 and 14:00

Singapore: March 28th at 01:00 and 13:00

Sydney: March 28th at 04:00 and 16:00

Even though there's now two different opportunities to get your hands on tickets for The International, we imagine it's still going to be quite the website-destroying scramble, so good luck to anyone who is going to make the effort.

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About Us

In March of 2003, a mystic crowbar appeared in Edge magazine, signifying that a long-awaited sequel to Half-Life was approaching. Munro formed this site almost immediately, as a place for people to share every snippet of information available about the upcoming sequel, as well as discuss it with other fans of the series.